lost ark developer smile door A wave of bots was banned recently to prevent cheating, but some real players found that they got banned as well.
Bot bans are obviously not uncommon in any online game, especially MMOs with large player bases. Smilegate has recently implemented a wave of bans on Steam, getting rid of a ton of bots, but it seems real players have also been caught in the crossfire.
The ban appears to primarily affect players who haven’t logged in for months or have only a short amount of game time. While a ban may not matter to a player who isn’t too involved in the game, a ban does matter to your entire Steam account. Due to the recent ban, recent reviews on the game’s Steam page are mostly negative at the time of writing.
Those who haven’t played the game in a while may not have noticed, but since some people apparently did for some reason, some people found out they had received a ban. This led to a thread from the game’s subreddit moderators acknowledging that there have been a ton of posts about the issue.
Since yesterday’s post on Reddit, Smilegate has made statements on the gaming forums and is working to have them retracted. “We’ve identified the bug that triggered these bogus bans, and are actively working to have them removed for all affected legitimate players, regardless of whether a support ticket has been submitted,” the post reads. Those who get banned can still file a ban ticket with customer support to get out of the ban as quickly as possible.
In more positive news for the game, a crossover with CD Projket’s The Witcher is on the way, launching on January 18th. Entire quests are all about protagonist Geralt, and there are a number of wizard-themed items and cosmetics to earn as well, such as wallpaper skins, weapon skins, and full character skins.